Three students earn Critical Language Scholarships

Three UH Mānoa students have been awarded U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) to study critical languages this summer. The three are Daniel Kim (language: Korean, host country: South Korea), Kathy Nii (language: Bangla/Bengali, host country: Bangladesh), and Morgan Pajo (language: Russian, host country: Russia).

“The CJS is one of the most competitive national scholarships for American undergraduate and graduate students who are working toward advanced competence in the nation’s critical languages,” said Dean Robert Bley-Vroman of the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature. “I’m very pleased that three of our students have been awarded this competitive scholarship.”

The students are among approximately 575 undergraduate and graduate students nationwide who received a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish or Urdu languages. 

U.S. students will spend seven to ten weeks in intensive language institutes in 14 countries where these languages are spoken.

For more information about the CLS Program or other exchange programs offered by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, please visit http://www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.